When most economists talk abut “economic agents”, they are conjuring up bodiless, genderless automatons who naturally have no biological predecessors, do not carry babies, do not give birth, and do not face questions of physical survival and human development. So it is easy for them to look at double-digit unemployment rates and deflationary pressures on wages and benefits simply as market phenomena while ignoring that such things actually threaten the physical survival of families. It is not surprising that in crises like ours, macroeconomic policies stemming from such dehumanized conceptions of the economy do not address the majority of people’s hardships — and end up being inhumane indeed.

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This article originally appeared in the New Deal 2.0 blog and is no longer available on that site. It later appeared in the Huffington Post and the Brecht Forum.